


Admit the Knife is There

by Lexicon_V



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: After Eadu, Cassian is tired of racism, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24497806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexicon_V/pseuds/Lexicon_V
Summary: "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that’s not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They haven’t begun to pull the knife out. They won’t even admit the knife is there." -Malcolm XCassian ruminates on why his argument with Jyn sent him over the edge.
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	Admit the Knife is There

He pulled himself up, away from them. Away from _her_. To be alone and calm the fire in his veins. 

Cassian Andor was widely regarded as a man of icy competence, his expression always neutral, his words always measured. It was a practiced, studied calm. In fact, Cassian was a man who ran hot with rage and had spent years holding himself at a careful simmer.

Simmering every time he was sent to meet a contact who could offer the Alliance vital credits or resources, only for the contact to rescind the offer. 

_“When you resort to violence you make it very hard to support you. Violence is never the answer. Surely, there is a better way.”_

(Somehow, violence was always the answer for Imperials, but if any other group responded in kind they were looters, rioters, criminals, terrorists.)

Simmering, remembering his father cut down at a peaceful protest.

_“The tragic and inevitable doomsday situation which has been universally forecast for the CIS arrived on Carida yesterday afternoon when soldiers firing into a large crowd of anti-military demonstrators, shot and killed 13 civilians…”_

Simmering every time he swallowed his accent, pushed the words of his birth language from his own mind, so he could pass. Blending in flawlessly with the Imperials so he could bring vital information back to the Alliance. Grateful that he could turn himself into someone bland-faced and boring, who could force a polite chuckle around the bile that rose in the back of his throat.

_“I don’t know how any human can live in the Outer Rim. It might as well be Wild Space. Have you ever met one? They come to the Core and can’t even learn Basic. No wonder the CIS lost. They put all their brain power together and were still no better than a pack of fighting animals.”_

Simmering during every recruitment mission to wherever the latest unrest churned. Another show of Imperial force against civilians begging for their rights. More Imperial sympathizers excusing the massacre of their own neighbors.

_“Being a stormtrooper is a stressful job! A few bad Jogan fruits don’t have to spoil the whole barrel. Most ‘troopers are just trying to do their job and keep us safe.”_

_“It would be a lot easier if people just respected the curfews and carried their scandocs like they’re supposed to. Don’t give them a reason to detain you in the first place, that’s what I tell my kids.”_

Simmering through the sneers of his own allies about his Separatist past, his Outer Rim homeworld.

_“This is a legal rebellion, Captain Andor, not some gang on a backwater ice planet. You are given a generous amount of leeway out in the field, but you are not exempt from the chain of command.”_

Simmering when he first heard an ex-Partisan deserter dismiss everything he had spent his life doing.

_“I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions,” in her crisp, Core accent._

It was a lie, and a blatant one. He knew that. He’d read her file. Hell, he’d practically written her file. But the word “luxury” put his hackles up, so he spit it back in her face just now.

“We don’t all have the _luxury_ of deciding when and where we want to care about something. Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you? Some of us _live it.”_

The real luxury was getting to ignore the Imperial boot pressing on the neck of the galaxy. Some people didn’t have to break any rules to feel the full, deadly weight of Imperial justice. Plenty of people before him had tried to change things peacefully and gotten nowhere. The galaxy was full of people who didn’t have a human face or pale skin or a haughty accent to keep them hidden in plain sight from Imperial eyes. 

Maybe some people could continue to ignore the escalating conflict, but their indifference wouldn’t save them. In the end, this war would reach everyone.

_“You might as well be a stormtrooper.”_

Boiling over.

He had trusted her. He’d put everything at risk for her, and for what? So she could march up late to the battlefield he’d be born on and tell him he was doing it wrong?

_“You can’t talk your way around this,”_

_“I don’t have to.”_

He sat against the wall taking slow, controlled breaths until the hammering of his heart slowed and the red cleared from his vision. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before he heard light footsteps on the ladder and Jyn’s head cautiously poked through the floor.

They stared at each other for a moment, each waiting for the other to strike first.

“Hey,” she finally said. It was quiet, trepidatious, conciliatory.

“I tried to call off the strike,” he said. “You can ask Kay.”

“He’d lie for you,” she said, but there was no real accusation in it.

“You saw how well he lies,” Cassian answered. She gave a rueful smile, brief and tight.

She pulled herself up the rest of the way and sat across from him. She looked at her hands and fussed with some loose threads on her gloves. Her hair was mostly dry now, though her clothes were still damp, like his. The silence hung there for a bit. She didn’t look at him when she spoke now. “You’re not a stormtrooper.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked up at him now and their eyes met. He simply nodded in acknowledgement. 

“It was different for me as a kid. I knew the Empire wanted me. I knew I had to hide my name, my past… I’m not sure they would have hurt me, if they found me, though. Not physically. They wanted my father so badly… I’d have been quite a prize if they’d gotten to me young enough. I was being hunted for who I was, not… what I am or where I was born. It’s different than being born into a world or a species they want to crush.” She paused for a minute and finally slumped back against the wall. “I hated them for what they did to _me._ I wanted _my_ revenge. I still do. But I don’t want to fight for just me anymore.”

“So fight for everyone,” he said simply

**Author's Note:**

> I’m working through some anger today.
> 
> Back in 2017, I was doing some Rogue One geeking out with a friend who grew up in Colombia. She said how much she loved Cassian’s, “We don’t all have the luxury of deciding...” speech because it resonated so strongly for her to see a Latin man call out a white woman for deciding to care about something that he never had the option to ignore. 
> 
> I think about that a lot.


End file.
